5770 or 5850 together with E8400?

Hi people

At first I was thinking of upgrading from my 9600GT to a 5770, but then I thought I might as well save up a little more and get a 5850 which is much faster. My CPU is a Core2Duo E8400, and my question is; With which card would I get a bigger percentage performance increase? Now my logic tells me that the 5850 will definately be the winner, but according to some posts on various forums etc. my CPU will bottleneck the 5850. So I don't want to spend more on the 5850 and get roughly the same performance as I would have got with a 5770brcause of my CPU.

Would there be a fair difference in performance between the 5770 and 5850given my CPU? Or should I rather go with the 5770 for now until I can afford to upgrade my CPU?

No way your CPU will bottleneck a 5850, just OC it to 3.6ghz and you'll be fine with an HD5870. E8400-8600 are still awesome for gaming, it's mostly the older Dual Core processors that are under 3.0ghz that bottleneck the more recent GPUs

I look at a bottleneck as the least powerful component that struggles to do its job :/ and an E8400 is still pretty damn powerful if you ask me. so dont see why it would bottleneck a 5850

So it won't bottleneck that card even without overclocking my CPU? Thing is, I don't really know that much about overclocking and I don't want to mess up my CPU, if its possible to mess it up. Is there a guide somewhere on how to OC an E8400?

So it won't bottleneck that card even without overclocking my CPU? Thing is, I don't really know that much about overclocking and I don't want to mess up my CPU, if its possible to mess it up. Is there a guide somewhere on how to OC an E8400?

ReApER_GuY

Your CPU is not bottlenecking your GPU at all. Just because your CPU is not the latest on the block does not mean it's not a great processor.

IMO I'd get the 5770... I have the 4870 and it's a beast of a card for the price I paid for it. 5770 is similar in performance with DX11. The 5850 is still good depending on how much gaming you do. Regardless you can't go wrong with either but if the only reason your choosing the 5850 is because of your CPU... GET THE 5770!!

EDIT: WOW THIS CAME OUT ALL WRONG!!!!!! OMG lol... I thought we were talking about 5750 vs. 5770. And for some reason every time I typed 5850 I meant 5750. LOL!!!! what a screw up.

Heh. I'd go with the 5850. You can always carry it over to your next rig. The only reason I have a 5770 was I couldn't find a 5850 anywhere when I assembled my pc last November. I skipped the 4800 series because I wanted a cooler-running ATI card. So the 5770 it was. It's okay. BUt, it's not as future-proof as the 5850.

MY E8400 is beastly with my 5870. A Wolfdale at 3ghz or higher is still great for gaming, and won't hold a 5850 back.

People really throw the word bottleneck far too much. The definition of the term bottleneck would mean that if I were to get the 5850 with a certain CPU, then it would perform the same with the same CPU and a HD 5770. There would be no performance between a 5770 and 5850 basically, which with modern CPU's such as the E8400 that definitely would not happen.

People get lost is when the CPU is on the lower end. Of course if you get a better CPU, your computer will perform better, but that doesn't mean a bottleneck is occurring...

I asked a similar question here before and was told to keep the e8400. You know what? They were right. I have a 4870 1gb and after just benchmarking batman aa, I get 52 min, 60 average with v-sync enabled at 1080p. I don't even need to upgrade anything right now but I will get a 5850 end of this month. Don't worry about your cpu for now.

Maybe at 3.0ghz, OC to 3.6ghz and youll be fine!

I found that I eliminated any bottlenecking on my 5870 once I got my E8400 into the 3.4-3.5ghz range. Even at stock the bottlenecking was very minor.

Thanks for all the replies guys. I think I'll definately go with the 5850 then. Sweet :)